h pillars exactly on the line where the ends of the rood
beam would be fitted into, or rested on corbels, in the pillars."

On either side of the rood altar the screen was pierced by a doorway for
processions, and the altar itself was protected by a fence-screen a
little farther west.

After showing how the counterpart of these arrangements existed at
Durham (_vide Arch. Journ._ liv. pp. 77-119), and describing the Durham
nave altar and rood, Mr Hope points out that at Gloucester, as at
Durham, "the eastern of the two doorways between the nave and the
cloister was shut off by the screen and reredos of a chapel adjoining it
on the west. The monks could therefore freely pass through the cloister
door without being interrupted by strangers. This eastern door was not
only the ordinary entrance from the cloister, but through it passed the
Sunday and other processions that included the circuit of the cloister
and buildings opening out of it. The procession always returned into the
church by the western cloister door, and, after making a station before
the great rood, passed through the rood doors in single files, and
entered the quire through the pulpitum or quire door."

In the chapel, on the north side (which was perhaps dedicated to St.
Thomas the Martyr), was formerly, as shown in the plan by Brown Willis,
the Blackleech monument, now in the south transept.

When the Benson screen was put up three Abbots were found interred in
their robes, and another coffin with two skulls in it. This fact gave a
possible clue to the identity of one of the Abbots. One probably was
Abbot Gamage, and the two skulls probably belonged to his brother, Sir
Nicholas Gamage, and his wife, who were buried near the Abbot.

The present #Organ# was built originally during 1663-1665 by Thomas
Harris, the father of the celebrated Renatus or Rene Harris, and the
cost was defrayed by public subscription, to which, however, the
inhabitants of Gloucester contributed but little. The contract was for
the sum of L400, exclusive of the sum for the building of the
organ-loft, and the decoration of the pipes and the case. The gilding
and painting was entrusted to Mr Campion in November 1664, and the work
was finished in December 1666. This artist was celebrated as a painter
of heraldic subjects, and the work done by him, chiefly on the large
pipes of the Great, is particularly beautiful.

The shield, which has been removed from the west front of the case,